The Tempered Radical

How Testing Will Change What I Teach Next Year

Regular Radical Readers know that high stakes testing is in the forefront of my mind right now.  I guess that's just what happens when you live and work in a nation hellbent on tying teacher evaluation to the scores that students produce on multiple choice exams.

The testing pressure is worse than usual for me this year simply because in response to President Obama's Race to the Top initiative, North Carolina has introduced new "Measures of Student Learning" exams for science. 

That means a "value-added" score based on nothing other than results my students generate on a late-May exam will be tied directly to my evaluation -- and, if our Republican-led legislature has its way, will eventually be the SOLE factor in determining whether or not I'm placed on a terminating contract.

Outside of design flaws that will make this "measure of student learning" nearly impossible for the 12-year olds that I teach to actually pass -- it is primarily composed of 35 isolated knowledge-driven questions that cover topics from a 23-page curriculum guide that we started learning in July -- I'm worried for one main reason:

I don't think I'll get through our entire curriculum before the test.

Part of the blame for failing to get through the curriculum before the test rests with the curriculum designers, who really did jam the proverbial kitchen sink into the sixth grade pacing guide. 

Need proof?  Then check out this PARTIAL list of "essential" vocabulary words and tell me whether or not you think it's possible for teachers to engage sixth graders in a meaningful exploration of this content in one year:

Conduction, Convection, Radiation, Heat Transfer, Mediums, Frequency, Amplitude, Pitch, Wavelength, Longitudinal Waves, Transverse Waves, Trough, Crest, Rarefaction, Compression, Electromagnetic Energy, Disturbances.

Melting Point, Boiling Point, Solubility, Solute, Solvent, Saturation, Phase Changes.

Density, Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic, Oceanic Crust, Continental Crust, Plate Tectonics, Alfred Wegener, Convergent Boundaries, Divergent Boundaries, Transform Boundaries, Primary Waves, Secondary Waves, Surface Waves, Parent Rock, Contour Plowing.

Eclipses, Phases of the Moon, Tidal Patterns, Hubble Telescope, International Space Station, Fermi-Gamma-Ray Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Gravitational Force.

And part of the blame for failing to get through the curriculum before the test rests with the calendar writers, who have my students taking our end of grade exam almost THREE FULL WEEKS before our school year actually ends. 

If I had another three weeks to work with my students, I'd get through the curriculum without any trouble.

But most of the blame for failing to get through the entire curriculum before the test rests with me.  After all, I spent a TON of class periods covering things that AREN'T going to be tested.

Here's what we were "wasting our time" on:

Sustained Silent Reading:  My interdisciplinary team made the decision long ago to do silent reading once a week in every classroom.  Our thinking was that students need daily time to read silently AND need to see EVERY teacher as a reader.

We're PRETTY sure that this time is well spent. Our team is full of passionate readers this year who love talking about books with us. 

A colleague stopped by the library the other day while we were reading and asked how we got our kids to be so quiet during SSR time.  My answer: Give kids chances to read every single day.

Time "Wasted":  30 minutes per week, or two class periods per month.  16 total class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Teaching the Nonfiction Reading Skills in the Common Core Curriculum:  Science teachers in North Carolina have been buried in training around the literacy standards for social studies, science and the technical subjects in the Common Core curriculum this year. 

In fact, it was the PRIMARY professional development that I received -- and the expectation was that science teachers would integrate nonfiction reading lessons into their curriculum.

Convinced that teaching students the skills necessary for being literate consumers of scientific text and literate participants in scientific conversations, my learning team jumped into that instruction with two feet.  Check out the lessons that we developed. 

Not bad, huh?

Here's the problem:  NONE of those skills will be tested on the fact-driven "measures of student learning" exams that my kids have to take.  Of course, the language arts teacher on our team is probably jazzed that I spent so much time teaching nonfiction  skills like identifying bias and evaluating evidence, but it ain't going to help me.

Time "Wasted":  4 two-day lessons.  A total of 8 class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Introducing Information Technology Standards:  Here in North Carolina, there is a required Information Technology curriculum that has to be delivered by core area teachers. 

That curriculum is actually pretty solid -- it addresses essential themes like teaching students to manage and evaluate information in online spaces and encouraging kids to use digital tools to publish for wider audiences.

On my interdisciplinary team, most of those lessons happen in my classroom simply because I'm comfortable with introducing students to digital tools and spaces.  Wrote a book about it, even.

To address those standards, I had my students work in groups to use Diigo to create a shared collection of resources connected to the New York City Soda Ban -- a high-interest topic that played a role in our nonfiction reading work.  Check out the lesson here.

We also talked about the characteristics of collaborative dialogue -- and then practiced those skills by engaging in a VoiceThread conversation about the New York City Soda Ban.  You can see the conversation here and explore the lessons here.

Again -- not bad stuff, huh? 

But nothing in these lessons is going to be tested either -- even though it IS a part of the required curriculum that students are supposed to be introduced to.

Time "Wasted":  8 class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Spending Two-Weeks Introducing the Scientific Method with an Actual Lab: Probably the worst decision that I made this year was deciding to start the year by introducing the scientific method with a lab activity. 

We spent the first few weeks using different liquids and materials to explore density -- the ONE theme that appears again and again in the content of our curriculum.

It was a pretty awesome experience for the  kids.

They know little about density when they come to sixth grade, so watching liquids separate out even after they are mixed and shaken vigorously raises a TON of wonder questions in their minds -- and because density appears so frequently in our curriculum, I've been able to use that experience as a starting point for a thousand conversations in our study of the required curriculum.

What I loved the most, though, was watching groups ask their own density-related extension questions -- and then try to figure out how they could (1). develop a lab to test their hypothesis and (2). communicate their findings with others.  Those are fundamental scientific behaviors, right?

Unfortunately, they're not TESTED scientific behaviors.

Time "Wasted":  8 class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Allowing Students to Ask and Answer their Own Wonder Questions:  One of my favorite goals in the Common Core writing standards for science and social studies argues that students should be able to "conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration."

That's AWESOME, isn't it? 

We are LITERALLY saying that students should be spending regular time in schools asking and then researching answers for their OWN questions.

To tackle this goal, I started the year by having my kids spend 5-10 minutes at the end of each class period recording interesting questions connected to the content that we were studying. 

Then, at the end of the quarter, students had an entire class period to study one of the questions that they had generated during the quarter.

That practice, sadly, was pushed aside at the beginning of the second semester when I realized that we were going to run out of time before testing season started. 

To ensure that my kids were prepared to ANSWER questions, I stopped having them ASK questions -- but not before we'd "wasted" another chunk of valuable instructional minutes.

Time "Wasted":  5-10 minutes per day, or two class periods per month for one semester.  8 total class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

If my math is right, that means I spent 48 class periods on things that AREN'T going to be tested.  That WAS a foolish decision, right?

I should have known better than to spend so much time encouraging reading, introducing the skills necessary to tackle nonfiction text, teaching about the role that technology can play in making learning easier, developing the core behaviors of scientists, and allowing my kids to ask and answer their own questions.

#measureTHATlearning

Never mind the fact that EVERY one of those skills is a part of one of the three different required curricula that I'm supposed to teach or that EVERY one of those skills are skills that sophisticated, responsible learners must master in order to be "college and career ready."

The only thing that matters right now is that NONE of those skills will show up on our "measures of student learning" exam, so spending time on them was a decision that I'll pay for when my students struggle to answer questions about Contour Plowing, Pangaea, Geotropism,  the Chandra X-Ray Observatory or the Fermi-Gamma Ray Telescope in a few weeks.

Unless I get lucky and the 35 multiple choice questions chosen by test writers all cover the content that I DID get through, the results could be disastrous:  My "value-added score" will be low, "needs-improvement" will be slapped next to my name, and I'll be placed on a terminating contract all in the name of "holding teachers accountable."

I won't make the same mistake twice, y'all.  

Science is going to look a lot different in my room next year.  Whether I like it or not, the content that is tested will get WAY more attention than the content that isn't -- and I'm pretty sure that's NOT a good thing.

#sheesh

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Related Radical Reads:

 The Monster You've Created

Stuffing Kids with Content

What DO We Want Kids to Know and Be Able to Do

 

What Do You Want From Me?

Blogger's Note: I read a John T. Spencer bit a few weeks back that touched a bunch of emotions.  That's led to a bit of unvarnished truth that I wanted to process here in a post that is decidedly light on the smiles and candycorn.  Hope that doesn't shake you. 

___________________________

One of the most painful moments in my teaching career happened several years back when I was working in a language arts classroom.

The results of our state's standardized tests had just come back and I was called into my assistant principal's office to review my scores.  "What are we going to do about this, Bill?" he said, passing a paper covered with red ink across the desk.  "You've got the lowest scores on the hallway again."

I wasn't mad at the principal.  In fact, I considered him a friend and he was only doing his job.  But in that moment, I was definitely defeated by a system that defined the value that I add in such a narrow way.

I lost it.  Literally started to cry in front of him.  I was embarrassed and brokenhearted all at the same time.  I felt like a failure and a fool all wrapped into one.

I was ashamed -- both of my results and my emotions:

Download: Slide_TheProblemwithShame

 

In that moment, I couldn't think rationally.  I couldn't remind myself that the end of grade exams given in our state only measured 2 out of 6 objectives in the curriculum.  I couldn't remind myself that my students excelled at untestable skills like engaging in collaborative dialogue or building new knowledge together.

I wasn't thinking about the kids who left my room inspired each year -- motivated to study new topics or to tackle new tasks or to try new things that they'd never considered trying before.  The power of those connections were forgotten; blurred by the stream of red ink that my state's legislators intended to use as an indicator of the sum total of the contributions that I make in the lives of my kids and my community.

I stormed out of the principal's office, grabbed my things and headed home.

On the way out the door, a parent chased me down in the parking lot.  "Mr. Ferriter.  MR. FERRITER.  Can I talk to you for a minute?" she said.

"I just wanted you to know how thankful I am for you.  My son loves you.  He comes home every day so excited about school -- and your lessons about life are sinking in.  He's proud of himself and he's determined and he told me that you talk about those things in class all the time.

"He means everything to me -- and sending him away for 8 hours a day is hard.  But knowing he's with you makes it easier.  I just thought you needed to know how grateful I am for you."

Her words mattered.  They were a reminder that I wasn't completely useless -- that some people really DO care about something other than end of grade test scores.

The entire experience has left me bitter and angry, though. I haven't let it go -- and I definitely haven't recovered.  Years later, I catch myself thinking back on that day.  

Most of the time, I wonder just what people want from me.  Am I supposed to inspire and encourage -- or am I supposed to grind a collection of random facts into twelve-year old minds in a march to the end of grade test?

Am I accomplished when my kids can spit back facts on low level multiple choice exams, or am I accomplished when my kids care about themselves and each other and their communities?  Can I make a difference even if I have the lowest test scores on the hallway?

And to be honest, my bitterness and anger only grows stronger in a Race to the Top world where even progressive politicians seem determined to use test scores to reward and punish teachers while simultaneously stripping away our resources and publicly celebrating their quest to destroy our profession.

Some days, fighting such a dysfunctional, confused system seems incredibly pointless, y'all.  Things aren't getting better.  They're far worse than they've ever been -- and I don't see any light at the end of the professional tunnel.

#whybother

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Related Radical Reads:

The Monster You've Created

My Work Has Been Gutted

Breaking Public Education to Pieces

Value-Added Teacher Evaluation Models Fail Kids and Communities

Anyone that has spent any length of time following the Radical knows that the test-happy culture that we're swimming in rubs me the wrong way.  It's simultaneously stripping the joy out of learning and driving good teachers out of the classroom all in a thinly-veiled attempt to declare war on teachers.

What frustrates me the most about today's accountability culture has always been the suggestion that measuring student performance on content-driven multiple choice tests given once per year is the best way to measure the "value that teachers add" to their kids, their schools and their communities. 

That's ALWAYS sat wrong with me -- and it should sit wrong with YOU too.  

Teachers do SO much more for our kids than deliver content. We coach and we encourage and we inspire.  We are cheerleaders.  Kids take risks while they are in our classes that they may never have even considered had it not been for the fact that they knew we cared.

But in a world where tests are created with the sole intention of ranking and sorting our teachers, those intangibles -- those small acts of kindness and care that are often the things that keep kids moving forward -- are dismissed, pushed aside by politicians who argue that the only value that matters rests in the results that we can measure with multiple choice exams.

My rants against testing have always felt half-baked to me, though, because I could never back up my assertions with a healthy dose of research -- the Turkish Delight of the #edpolicy kingdom.

Until now, that is. 

You see, a new study from Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University FINALLY supports my hunch that our single-minded determination to assess and evaluate the cognitive impacts that teachers have on students is flawed policy at best -- and failing our children at worst. 

What Jackson -- who was interested in determining the impact that cognitive and non-cognitive behaviors have on the future success of students -- discovered should force every parent, politician and policymaker who cares about schools to rethink the role that testing plays in our buildings. 

First, he discovered that non-cognitive skills and abilities like motivation, determination, and self-restraint are a better predictor of future success -- particularly for struggling students -- than the cognitive skills measured by standardized tests.

Perhaps more importantly, he discovered that SOME teachers are good at increasing the cognitive skills of their students and OTHER teachers are good at increasing the non-cognitive skills of their students, but MOST teachers AREN'T good at increasing BOTH cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

This has HUGE implications, doesn't it? 

If Jackson's research and methodology is sound, current educational policies -- which prioritize test scores when measuring a teacher's value -- are incentivizing the WRONG behaviors. 

Our students are the ultimate losers in environments that encourage teachers to push non-cognitive skills and abilities -- skills and abilities that Jackson argues are actually BETTER indicators of future success -- to the sidelines in response to the cognitive-first realities they are working in.

What politicians who are pushing the testing culture in our schools should REALLY worry about, though, is that educational policies designed to reward teachers for producing results on standardized tests are actually wasting taxpayer cash. 

As Jackson explains:

"Teacher effects on test scores and teacher effects on non-cognitive ability are weakly correlated such that many teachers in the top of test score value-added distribution will also be among the bottom of teachers at improving non-cognitive skills.

This means that a large share of teachers thought to be highly effective based on test score performance will be no better than the average teacher at improving college-going or wages."

And:

"Because variability in outcomes associated with individual teachers that is unexplained by test scores is not just noise, but is systematically associated with their ability to improve typically unmeasured non-cognitive skills, classifying teachers based on their test score value added will likely lead to large shares of excellent teachers being deemed poor and vice versa."

Just stew in that for a minute, will you?

We are literally spending MILLIONS of dollars  -- not to mention MILLIONS of instructional hours -- every year measuring the wrong skills and rewarding the wrong teachers!  Sure, mastering the content covered in the K12 curricula matters, but according to Jackson, mastering non-cognitive skills -- skills that we currently do nothing to assess -- matters more.

No joke, y'all:  It's time that you start asking your policymakers some difficult questions about their positions on value-added measures of teacher performance.

If Jackson is right, those policies -- which have rapidly become the norm instead of the exception in most states in America -- are wasting our time AND our money.

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Related Radical Reads:

Nate Silver on Using Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers

Three Things Parents and Policymakers Need to Know about Merit Pay in Education

What Economists Don't Understand about Educators

 

Nate Silver on Using Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers [SLIDE]

One of the hottest statistical minds in the world right now is Nate Silver, the mind behind the FiveThirtyEight blog which is dedicated to helping readers to "cut through the clutter of this data-rich world." 

Silver rose to prominence initially by using algorithms to correctly predict the winner of 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election.  He's gone on to become one of the most respected voices on the use of data to drive decisions.

Yesterday, Silver participated in an online IAmA Blogger Q+A session over at Reddit -- and the first question that he was asked was whether or not he believed that using standardized test scores to determine a teacher's value was a responsible decision.

Silver's response was worth sharing with every parent and educational policymaker you know:

 

Download Slide_SilveronTesting

 

Now to be fair, Silver DOES say that he'd need to give the topic a much longer look before he'd be able to make any real decisions on using test scores to evaluate teachers. 

But his initial hunch that using test scores as the most important measure of a teacher's effectiveness is an example of using data badly aligns nicely with the thinking of other really bright minds working BEYOND education -- including Bill Gates (see here and here), Dan Pink (see here) and Chip and Dan Heath (see here).

And as Liz Dwyer points out on the Good Education blog, Silver's hunch on testing as a tool for holding teachers accountable also aligns nicely with REAMS of studies already completed by everyone from The National Research Council and the president of Math for America to respected senior scholars like Richard Rothstein.

Finally, Silver's initial hunch ALSO aligns nicely with the opinions of the very companies that make the standardized tests that are strangling education in our country, who have noted time-and-again that their products were never designed to be used to draw conclusions about individual teachers. 

So if there is a broad consensus starting to form that using test scores to evaluate teachers is a bad idea, then why do policymakers -- including President Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan -- keep pushing for these failed policies?

That's a question that every person you vote for should be forced to answer.

_______________________________

 

Original Image Credit: American statistician Nate Silver at SXSW in Austin, Texas USA on March 15, 2009 by Randy Stewart -- Licensed Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike on January 10, 2012

Quote from: Data King Nate Silver Isn't Sold on Evaluating Teachers With Test Scores

 

 

 

Three Things Every Parent and Politician Needs to Know about Merit Pay in Education

On the drive home today, I tuned in to the local talk radio station because the host was interviewing a TON of local and state political candidates and I wanted to learn more about their individual positions. 

The interviews were incredibly interesting --- especially when they turned to education simply because the host seemed to ask every candidate how they felt about merit pay for teachers. 

Considering how important the issue has become in conversations about the future of education, I decided to whip up a list of three things that I wish every parent and politician knew about merit pay.

Here they are:

Experts in fields BEYOND education are convinced that merit pay plans WON'T improve schools.

The simple truth about merit-based compensation plans is that they are ONLY effective in fields that require "rudimentary cognitive skills." 

In fact, research has shown that compensation plans that tie pay to performance may actually have a NEGATIVE impact in knowledge-driven fields like education.

Need proof? 

Then check out this RSA Animate video sharing the ideas of Daniel Pink -- a one-time supporter of merit pay plans in education whose personal opinion changed after studying nearly every independent research report on the impact of incentives on human motivation. 

Or this bit detailing the thinking of Chip and Dan Heath, who argue that our constant attempts to design a better carrot result in a tendency to focus on ONE variable -- which might successfully drive change in simple fields, but are destined to fail in work that is complex and dependent on multiple variables.

 

Most merit pay plans are generally built around high-stakes standardized tests that almost NEVER actually measure anything we REALLY want our students to know and be able to do.

In almost every conversation that I have with stakeholders about the skills that students need in order to succeed in tomorrow's workplace, people -- including employers in almost every field -- argue that kids need to be able to communicate, to collaborate, and to solve problems creatively. 

Sounds about right, doesn't it? 

If YOUR child left school having mastered those three skills, you'd be happy and they'd be successful no matter what profession -- or personal passion -- they decided to pursue.

Here's the thing:  Today's high stakes standardized end-of-grade exams -- which are almost ALWAYS used as the basis for deciding which teachers deserve merit pay bonuses -- don't measure ANY of those skills.  Instead, they measure nothing more than a student's ability to remember and regurgitate facts.

Which means that the merit pay plans that wonks like to tout as silver bullets for motivating lazy teachers end up simultaneously stripping classrooms of the kinds of higher-order skills that we claim to care about. 

Need proof?  Then look at what years of teaching in a tested classroom did to my instruction.

 

If you want to incentivize something, incentivize collaboration.

Something incredibly powerful is happening in my professional life this year:  I'm working on a learning team with two young teachers who are literally changing the way that I teach.  Both are skilled at developing hands-on, inquiry-based science experiences for kids.

That's an area of REAL weakness for me even if I AM certified to teach middle school science!

What's cool, though, is I'm having JUST as a significant impact on my colleagues. 

I bring a bunch of nonfiction reading experience to our collective planning table -- I have spent the better part of my career in language arts classrooms, after all -- and that's helping my peers, who AREN'T trained reading teachers.

That means collaboration is paying off for ALL of the kids on our hallway. 

My students are benefiting from the inquiry-based strengths of my peers and their students are benefiting from my experience as a reading teacher. 

That's beautiful, right?

But here's the thing:  That collaboration will DIE in a merit-based workplace.

Think about it:  Would YOU share your best practices with struggling colleagues if you knew that there was a limited pot of money that was going to be given to a small handful of teachers that produced the best scores? 

HECK NO.  You'd let THEM -- and more importantly, the KIDS in their classrooms -- fail miserably because it would give YOU a better chance of cashing in.

Which is why the report on redesigning professional compensation for educators that I wrote with 18 accomplished teachers a few years ago recommends incentivizing collaboration INSTEAD of individual performance.

If we believe that SOME teachers have discovered the best strategies for teaching essential knowledge and skills to our kids, why wouldn't we design incentive systems that encourage SHARING rather than COMPETITION between peers?

 

I get it, y'all.  There ARE real problems in our educational system that need to be addressed.  Change IS necessary. The uncomfortable truth that we've been all-too-willing to overlook is that our current approach to schooling just ain't working for a TON of our students.

But as a teacher AND a taxpayer, I cringe whenever I hear someone argue on behalf of merit pay programs simply because they WON'T improve schools. 

Instead, they're just another #edpolicy disaster that the kids in our classrooms will end up paying for.

 

Can #edpolicy Nation Learn from Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts?

While I can't find an article to support the assertion, I heard an interesting statistic on ESPN's  Mike and Mike Show this week:  Of the 18 quarterbacks taken with the first pick in the NFL draft, NONE -- including legends like Terry Bradshaw and Peyton Manning -- have led their new teams to a winning season in year one.

In fact, the BEST performance turned in by a quarterback taken with the first pick was a seven-win season.

That doesn't bode well for Andrew Luck, does it?

The Colts won TWO games last year, y'all.  Then, they lost -- or cut, or waived away -- a TON of the name-brand talent to free-agency. To make matters worse, Indianapolis enters this season with a first-time General Manager AND a first-time head coach calling the shots. 

While excitement in Indy may be higher than ever, expectations -- of fans, of the organization, of the national sports media -- are justifiably tempered.

No one is going to be screaming for Luck to get canned when the Colts finish yet another disappointing season this year.  Instead, we'll recognize the situation for what it is:  Luck -- like most football players taken with the first pick -- is a talented player on a REALLY crappy team.

What's more, EVERYONE who cares about the Colts will hold Indianapolis management accountable for making things BETTER for Luck in the next few years. 

The expectation will be that Colt's owner Jim Irsay will pony up serious cash to build Luck's offensive line and to surround him with a set of stars at talent positions like running back and wide receiver.  Investments will be made in the starting defense in an effort to keep games close and to give Luck more chances with the football. 

Long story short: People will expect great things from Luck, but they'll also understand that great things don't happen in a vacuum. 

If Luck struggles in an underfunded, dysfunctional system that needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up, it'll be the system -- not the star who is struggling alone against impossible circumstances -- that bears the brunt of the blame.

That's a lesson that I wish #edpolicy wonks would learn when whipping up new plans to hold teachers accountable for their performance. 

The uncomfortable truth for education's most vocal critics is that teachers struggle in the same kinds of underfunded, dysfunctional systems that Andrew Luck will face this year all of the time -- and in the face of a sluggish economy, those systems are MORE underfunded and dysfunctional than ever.

We face ever-growing class sizes as districts freeze hiring in response to budget cuts.  Those classes have more students with special learning needs than at any point in the history of the public school system, yet there are fewer special programs teachers to provide ongoing support to students in the regular education classroom. 

Professional development dollars are limited at best, leaving few opportunities for teachers to acquire the kinds of new skills necessary to adapt to ever-changing school populations.  Supplies that we once took for granted -- simple things like computers, copy paper, and colored pencils -- are few and far between.

Heck, the budget is so tight in my district that janitorial services have been cut to the quick -- which means that if I want the tile floor in my science lab to be cleaned, I've got to go find a mop and a bucket and do it myself.

Can you even IMAGINE the Colts cutting their custodial services and instead asking Andrew Luck to pick up a mop a few times a week?

#meneither

I guess what I'm trying to say is that teachers are FINE with being held accountable for our performance when we know that we are working in systems that give us a fighting chance to succeed. 

But it's unrealistic -- not to mention unhealthy and unfair -- to point the finger at classroom teachers for the struggles of the system while simultaneously refusing to surround them with the tools that they need in order to succeed. 

#truth

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Related Radical Reads:

Holding Teachers Accountable Ain't That Easy

What I REALLY Reject....

Barkin' Dawgs and Miserably Poor Policies

What I'd Hold YOU Accountable For

 

Are We Asking the Right Questions?

Spend any time in the professional development sessions that start every school and you're bound to come to a painful realization, y’all: Schools – and the parents, practitioners, principals, and policymakers who support them – have a dysfunctional relationship with answers.

“What kinds of patterns can we find in the wrong answers that students gave on the end of grade exams?” we ask at the beginning of every school year.

“Are certain groups and/or grade levels better at answering certain types of questions? How should we change the way that we deliver information to ensure that more kids get more answers right on next year’s exams?”

We dissect individual test items, looking for vocabulary words that might have tripped students up; we try to spot teachers that seem to have discovered the best practices for helping kids to master required content; and we worry about what standardized testing results would say to our community about our accomplishments.

And that bugs me. When the schooling becomes a single-minded grind to find “the right answers,” powerful questions are pushed aside.

At the community level that means no one ever digs deep enough to figure out just what we want our kids to learn while they’re in school.

We haven’t collectively clarified the kinds of educational outcomes that we care about.Instead, we blindly accept the arguments of policymakers that schools are failing and more accountability (read: public ridicule based on rankings released after once-a-year multiple choice tests are administered) is the only answer.

At the district level that means no one ever pushes back against practices that few educators believe in.

“Are we REALLY convinced that standardization – of content, of delivery, of assessments – is making our schools stronger?” is a question that no one seems willing to ask.Instead, we accept the status quo and do the best we can to work within a system that we KNOW is broken.

At the school level that means no one ever questions the value of the content that we’re required to teach.

“What do we want students to know and be able to do?” isn’t worth talking about; it’s a question that has already been answered in daily pacing guides designed to ensure that anything that MIGHT be on the end of grade exams is covered before June 1^st.

And at the classroom level, that means no one ever dares to imagine.

Phrases like “what would happen if” and “why should we believe in” that play a regular role in the language of innovators and entrepreneurs are replaced with phrases like “do you know how to” and “what do you remember about” which do nothing more than emphasize the skills required to find the right answers to someone else’s questions.

The simple truth is that reform just isn’t possible in organizations who have forgotten how to ask their own questions – and sadly, that’s what education has become.

 

This post originally appeared over at the Smartblogs Education site. 

Does this Scholastic Mailer Bother Anyone Besides Me?

As I was cleaning out my school mailbox today, I stumbled across the following mailer from Scholastic -- the ever-popular book and magazine company that serves a bajillion schools and students a year:

(click to enlarge)

Does that bother anyone besides me? 

I guess whenever I see the word "IMPORTANT" followed by a bulleted list that STARTS with "Raise Test Scores" and ENDS with "Improve Understanding of Science Concepts," I see ANOTHER reminder of our nation's skewed #edpolicy priorities. 

What's frightening is that I'm SURE that Scholastic has done enough research to KNOW that putting "Raise Test Scores" first in their bulleted list is going to result in more opened envelopes that putting "Improve Understanding of Science Concepts" first. 

Companies of all kinds respond to their markets, y'all -- and Scholastic's figured out that educators care first-and-foremost about raising test scores. 

That should leave us feeling more than a little convicted.

#truth

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Related Radical Reads:

What DO We Want Students to Know and be able to Do?

Bulldozing the Forests

Assessing Learning the Danish Way

 

 

Asking People to Eat Crap [SLIDE]

Poking around my feed reader on Thursday, I found a great bit on Scott McLeod's blog spotlighting two interesting quotes about value-added measures of teacher quality. 

Both came from a Diane Ravitch bit, which was in-turn sparked by an exchange happening between Anthony Cody and Vicki Phillips -- a representative of the Gates Foundation. 

My favorite quote makes a simple argument:  Organizations who argue that value-added measures of teacher quality -- which have been proven time-and-again to be flawed on a good day -- should play SOME role in teacher evaluation are doing nothing more than asking people to eat crap:

Download Slide_EatingCrap

 

Now don't get me wrong:  Even I think that teacher evaluation practices are fatally flawed.  

Check out this bit I wrote almost two years ago arguing that my own evaluations have done little to help me to improve as an educator. 

But that doesn't mean I'm ready to accept high-stakes test-driven evaluation models that do little to encourage collaboration between teachers and that force teachers to focus on the kinds of simplistic skills that we can actually test instead of the kinds of essential skills our kids will actually need to survive and thrive in tomorrow's world. 

#truth

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Related Radical Reads:

Teacher Evaluation is Fatally Flawed

What DO We Want Students to Know and Be Able to Do?

Tested - The Price We Pay to Make the Grade

What Economists Don't Understand About Educators

In yet another example of economists churning out crappy research that will have a negative impact on #edupolicy, Harvard professor Roland Fryer and Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago professor Steven Levitt recently released a study touting the #edupower of "loss aversion" merit pay programs.

So what exactly do "loss aversion" merit pay programs look like in action?

Essentially, participating teachers are given a bonus at the BEGINNING of a school year -- in Fryer and Levitt's study, $4,000 -- and then told that they'll have to GIVE BACK monies if their students don't meet and/or exceed expectations on standardized tests given at the end of the school year.

Now THAT is nothing short of pure #edubrilliance, isn't it? 

Hit 'em with a little carrot and a little stick and maybe those lazy teachers will pick up the slack and finally start performing.  The same approach was VERY successful, Fryer and Levitt point out, at improving the productivity of CHINESE FACTORY WORKERS in the ONLY other setting where the benefits of loss-aversion merit pay programs were studied.

#sheesh

#teachingAINTfactorywork

Outside of the obvious methodological flaws in this heaping pile of #edutrash -- the authors themselves admit that unravelling the impact different members of teaching teams have on the performance of the individual students that they share was impossible -- Fryer and Levitt fail to understand a simple #edutruth about teachers:

External incentives -- no matter WHEN they are awarded -- are ineffective in education because we're ALREADY working as hard as we can to do right by our kids.

As my good friend Rick DuFour likes to say, NO ONE in this profession wakes up in the morning thinking, "I'm going to do a half-assed job this morning because I'm just not being paid enough to work any harder than that." 

Teachers are driven by the desire to see our students succeed -- and while our practices may need polishing, to assume that a few thousand bucks might FINALLY force us to give our all is nothing short of #eduignorance. 

Seriously.  Let's think about this for a minute:  Are we REALLY convinced that folks who have willingly chosen a career in the classroom are holding something back out of spite over their salaries knowing full-well that holding back has life-altering consequences for kids? 

The problem in education isn't long lines of pathetic teachers who need a good kick in the pants, y'all. The problem in education is long lines of teachers who are working in dysfunctional, underfunded systems that incentivize irresponsible practices.

And to put it bluntly, we're just plain #eduscrewed as long as we are willing to allow the narrow, pessimistic view of human behavior held by economists to drive the most important choices that we make about what happens in our classrooms.

#whew

#gotTHAToffmychest

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Really Long List of Related Radical Reads Which I Invite Economists to Peruse Before Wasting Anymore Time Studying Merit Pay Programs:

Note to Arne: Cash Incentives Never Work

Need MORE Proof that Incentive Programs are Dangerous?

The Monster You've Created

Bulldozing the Forests

The Truth About Teacher Merit Pay Plans

Merit Pay Plans for Teachers are a Poor Idea

The Unintended Consequences of Rewards Programs in Schools

Tired of Being the Nation's Punching Bag

What CAN Schools Learn from Hero Ball?

Why I NEVER Recommend Teaching as a Profession Anymore